The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I. Hitchcock
Authors: William I. Hitchcock
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be engulfed by the flames. By the end of the rampage, eighteen people, including three women, were dead.
Citizens of Belgium’s capital city, Brussels, greet the ar- rival of British troops, September 4, 1944. Imperial War Museum
Not all such German atrocities were provoked by re- sistance activity. On the same day, in Anhée, a small village on the left bank of the Meuse, a battalion of re- treating SS Panzer Grenadiers massacred 13 civilians, pillaged the homes of the village, and set fire to fifty- eight buildings in the town. The victims were mostly men in their sixties—one was eighty-two years old— and none of them had resistance connections of any kind. Just a few hundred yards up the road, soldiers of the 3rd Regiment, Hitlerjugend Division, crossed the Meuse between Dinant and Namur, established a
command post, and then deliberately recrossed the river again to pillage and destroy the local villages. In the small riverfront villages of Godinne, Bouillon, Hun, Warnant, and Rivière, the Germans robbed, then set ablaze, numerous homes and shot five civilians to death. Two women, Jeanne Féraille, twenty-one years old, and Elze Hubrecht, thirty-seven, both of nearby Annevoie, were repeatedly raped. Yet the Germans re- served their most vicious treatment for captured resis- tance men. On September 7, in Failon, eighteen miles east of Dinant, German soldiers arrested seven men, four of whom were civilians, three of whom were mem- bers of the local gendarmerie. The Germans considered them all likely resistance members, or “terrorists.” The prisoners were transferred to Bonsin the next morn- ing, where they were murdered. A medical examina- tion of the bodies by a local physician the following day revealed that the men had been badly beaten, tortured, and mutilated. One of the victims had his sexual organs cut off. And in December and January 1944–45, this sort of violence and atrocity started up all over again, when these same Germans returned to Belgium during their ill-fated attack in what became the Battle of the Bulge. The images so many Allied soldiers carried with them of the glory days of September have done much to cre- ate a legend about Belgium’s “easy war.” But liberation in Belgium—a prolonged, uncertain period that ran
from September 1944 until January 1945—would prove to be every bit as traumatic as in Normandy. The Bel- gians would have their war, after all. 4
* * *
W
ITH THE DEPARTURE of the Germans in ear- ly September, Belgians and their liberators grappled with the challenge of restoring the
political order. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Al- lied Commander, appointed a Briton, Major- General George W. E. J. Erskine, to head the mission to Belgium from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). Erskine’s appointment reflected Brit- ain’s military control of Brussels and Antwerp, while the Americans occupied southeastern Belgium, from Liège to the Ardennes. Erskine was not meant to rule with an iron fist: his job was to resurrect Belgian po- litical institutions, impose calm in the streets, and en- sure the prompt resumption of industrial production on behalf of the Allied armies. He was all too eager to delegate politics to the Belgians themselves. Yet, unlike France, where Charles de Gaulle strode forward to take up his role as the “man of destiny” at the crucial hour, Belgians lacked a national figure to whom they could turn. Belgium’s king, Leopold III, had been shamed by his wartime behavior. In May 1940, after the German
invasion and the defeat of the Belgian army, Leopold refused to leave the country (as the Dutch sovereign, Queen Wilhelmina, had done) and sued for peace with the Germans. The prime minister, Hubert Pierlot, and his cabinet decided instead to flee the country into France, and soon made their way to London, there to join other forlorn governments-in-exile that had been chased off the continent by the Nazis. King Leopold,
Citizens of Belgium’s capital city, Brussels, greet the ar- rival of British troops, September 4, 1944. Imperial War Museum
Not all such German atrocities were provoked by re- sistance activity. On the same day, in Anhée, a small village on the left bank of the Meuse, a battalion of re- treating SS Panzer Grenadiers massacred 13 civilians, pillaged the homes of the village, and set fire to fifty- eight buildings in the town. The victims were mostly men in their sixties—one was eighty-two years old— and none of them had resistance connections of any kind. Just a few hundred yards up the road, soldiers of the 3rd Regiment, Hitlerjugend Division, crossed the Meuse between Dinant and Namur, established a
command post, and then deliberately recrossed the river again to pillage and destroy the local villages. In the small riverfront villages of Godinne, Bouillon, Hun, Warnant, and Rivière, the Germans robbed, then set ablaze, numerous homes and shot five civilians to death. Two women, Jeanne Féraille, twenty-one years old, and Elze Hubrecht, thirty-seven, both of nearby Annevoie, were repeatedly raped. Yet the Germans re- served their most vicious treatment for captured resis- tance men. On September 7, in Failon, eighteen miles east of Dinant, German soldiers arrested seven men, four of whom were civilians, three of whom were mem- bers of the local gendarmerie. The Germans considered them all likely resistance members, or “terrorists.” The prisoners were transferred to Bonsin the next morn- ing, where they were murdered. A medical examina- tion of the bodies by a local physician the following day revealed that the men had been badly beaten, tortured, and mutilated. One of the victims had his sexual organs cut off. And in December and January 1944–45, this sort of violence and atrocity started up all over again, when these same Germans returned to Belgium during their ill-fated attack in what became the Battle of the Bulge. The images so many Allied soldiers carried with them of the glory days of September have done much to cre- ate a legend about Belgium’s “easy war.” But liberation in Belgium—a prolonged, uncertain period that ran
from September 1944 until January 1945—would prove to be every bit as traumatic as in Normandy. The Bel- gians would have their war, after all. 4
* * *
W
ITH THE DEPARTURE of the Germans in ear- ly September, Belgians and their liberators grappled with the challenge of restoring the
political order. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Al- lied Commander, appointed a Briton, Major- General George W. E. J. Erskine, to head the mission to Belgium from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). Erskine’s appointment reflected Brit- ain’s military control of Brussels and Antwerp, while the Americans occupied southeastern Belgium, from Liège to the Ardennes. Erskine was not meant to rule with an iron fist: his job was to resurrect Belgian po- litical institutions, impose calm in the streets, and en- sure the prompt resumption of industrial production on behalf of the Allied armies. He was all too eager to delegate politics to the Belgians themselves. Yet, unlike France, where Charles de Gaulle strode forward to take up his role as the “man of destiny” at the crucial hour, Belgians lacked a national figure to whom they could turn. Belgium’s king, Leopold III, had been shamed by his wartime behavior. In May 1940, after the German
invasion and the defeat of the Belgian army, Leopold refused to leave the country (as the Dutch sovereign, Queen Wilhelmina, had done) and sued for peace with the Germans. The prime minister, Hubert Pierlot, and his cabinet decided instead to flee the country into France, and soon made their way to London, there to join other forlorn governments-in-exile that had been chased off the continent by the Nazis. King Leopold,
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